Love is the Drug

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “A dissociative? What kind? An opioid? A morphinan? Definitely not nitrous, not the morning after …”

  “He said no one knew. He said it was some new drug, the kind you make.”

  Coffee nods thoughtfully, unperturbed by the accusation. “The best lies stay close to the truth. Say it was a novel synthesis. Something those CIA crackpots dreamed up. They give it to you, blame it on me. I get dragged into custody on trumped-up charges for selling a couple of pills at a party, now everyone blames me. But if they haven’t found that canteen …”

  “You still have it!”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t dare go back to check. If I skip out, you’ll have to find it, Bird. There’s a few people I know you can trust to test it, prove there was no way I could have synthesized it myself….”

  “What if you could have?”

  His head snaps to her and he curses softly. “But you know I didn’t.”

  “I know. They’re doing this to you because of me. They think I might have told you something. He says it’s because of my parents, but I think it’s bigger … I think I learned something that night. Something huge, and they’re terrified of what will happen if I leak it.”

  “Make me stay,” he says. “Tell me to stay for you.”

  “And if they crucify you for my sake? Forget it, Coffee, I don’t need a sacrifice.”

  But she’s making one, anyway. Those bleak, desperate eyes, that quickening, sharp breath. She will lose so much if she pushes him away. She will lose the hope of him, the broad horizon of his strange possibility. He will escape to São Paulo or Brasília, and she will muddle on in the District, hoping that eventually Roosevelt’s attention will turn to juicier prey.

  But he will be free, he will be himself, he will not hurt, the one who first called her Bird.

  She hugs him. Just leans forward and wraps her arms around him and buries her head beneath his chin. He jerks, then hugs her back, tightly enough to constrict her breathing. She doesn’t mind. She’s delirious with him, or maybe that’s just the pot. The three inches of exposed skin touching his expands so that she is all neck and fingers, a magnificently twisted homunculus. They breathe in tandem and they do not move for a million years, for the eternity she has waited to do this, and the eternity she will wait when he leaves.

  Something splashes in the water. He pulls back and looks around.

  “A duck.” His voice is a wrung dishrag.

  “You’ve got my blessing, Coffee. If you need it. Take care of yourself. Maybe one day I’ll see you again.”

  He doesn’t even look at her when she starts to leave. She thinks he won’t say anything at all, but he finally manages when she steps onto the bridge.

  “I think she’s worthy of her mother, you know. Emily Bird. I think she’s good enough to beat them all.”

  “And Alonso Oliveira?”

  A Coffee smile. “That asshole? He’ll figure something out.”

  * * *

  She dresses carefully, the morning of her free fall. She armors herself in baggy jeans and old tennis shoes, a Cookie Monster T-shirt under a gray turtleneck. Her stitches came out a few days ago, but the scar is still pulled and angry at her hairline. She considers dying her hair a shocking red, might dare it if she had enough time, but Aaron needs to get to school and so she doesn’t.

  Nicky gives her the once-over when she gets to the kitchen that morning. “New look, kid,” he says, neutral, as he eats the same marshmallow cereal as Aaron.

  “I thought it was time for a change,” she says, resisting the urge to touch her exposed ears and neck.

  He nods slowly. He starts to smile, but it falls. “What about your mom?”

  “She ain’t here, now is she?”

  And that’s all he has to say about it. School is easier, in its way. No one even talks to her there, they just stare and whisper. She’s finally lost it, they say. They hide behind their masks at school, but Bird doesn’t bother with hers. Sometimes she’d welcome getting the v-flu — at least that way she wouldn’t have to suffer through Devonshire senior class politics. And if she died, it would serve her mother right.

  She winces at the childishness of the thought, but she will get better, she will grow into this painful, shiny new skin. She sits by herself at lunch, warded away from the somewhat-black lunch table by Charlotte’s awkwardly hunched back. Her ostracization complete, no Felice required.

  She hurries outside as soon as she’s finished, though the ground is wet and the sky is gray and spitting misery. The soldiers watch her cross the bridge, but the garden is within sight of their posting. The fountain is dry and filled with leaves, the roses themselves little more than spindly branches with sharp thorns. Still, she breathes easier here. The second half of classes is canceled today for group counseling followed by a chapel service in honor of “sick and departed friends.” If she’s lucky, she’ll sleep through the service.

  But she falls asleep in the garden despite the cold and wet. She dreams of Coffee, sun-red and frowning on a beach. He’s holding out Paul’s canteen — she remembers it now, a metal canister covered in faux-military camo.

  “It’s all here, Bird,” dream-Coffee says, but she can’t reach him. She never will again.

  She wakes up with a start to the sound of someone else entering the garden. It’s Marella, looking as ragged around the edges as Bird feels.

  “You’re missing group therapy,” Marella says.

  Bird takes a startled glance at her phone and sees she’s been here for an hour. “What about you?”

  Marella shrugs. “Felice started crying, and I didn’t see you. Figured I might as well check in case she’d dumped your body behind the cafeteria trash bins.”

  “Oh no,” Bird says, matching Marella’s sly smile. “Felice would bribe some Bradley boy to do it. I’m safe until at least seventh period.”

  “You’re looking hot, Emily Bird.”

  “You too, Marella. Are you still with that Holton girl?”

  Marella balances on the lip of the fountain, looking younger and more innocent than Bird’s ever seen her. “Her family’s keeping her under house arrest until they find a vaccine for this thing and she sure as hell hasn’t called. So I guess, no, not really. How about you? You broken up with that jerk yet?”

  “How do you know I want to?”

  Marella jumps from the fountain and lands in front of Bird’s bench. “I saw you this morning, sistah. If Coffee hadn’t jumped, he’d have seen it too. Bird is reborn.”

  Bird laughs. “And she don’t take no shit.”

  “So have you?”

  “I will. For sure I will.”

  Marella sits beside her and they skip counseling together, peaceably side by side, shoulders touching in a way that’s only mostly platonic.

  It’s inevitable, she supposes, that God would call her bluff. They join the crowd crossing over to the boys’ side for the big chapel service. She hews close to the adults, teachers she vaguely recognizes mixed with the medical staff and soldiers and a few men in suits and earpieces — Secret Service for the vice president’s daughter. Even so, Paul sees her as she starts up the chapel steps.

  “Emily!” he yells from the doorway. She can feel Charlotte’s and Felice’s glares from fifteen feet away, their appalled realization that Paul might not have given up on her when they have.

  Marella squeezes her hand. “Reborn,” she whispers. “None of those girls can touch you anymore.”

  Bird backs down the steps slowly. If she has to do this, she’d rather not be in the middle of a crowd of fourth graders. The doctor she recognizes from her first day back gives her a startled glance, as if she’s noticed Bird there for the first time, and rubs her eyes hard enough that Bird winces.

  “Emily.” Paul puts his arm on her shoulder and she stares at his hand until he takes it away. “You … what happened? Your cousin play a practical joke or something?”

  When she looks up at him now, all she can think of is how he looked when he
said he loved her, not so much devoted as determined, exactly the way he looks now. It should be flattering that he’s pursuing her without any encouragement, but all she can wonder is why. Loving her is about fifth on her list of likely possibilities.

  “What do you want?” Her voice is soft, barely inflected. She searches for Marella in the crowd over his shoulder, but all she can see are soldiers and lower school uniforms. Why hasn’t anyone gone into the chapel yet?

  He frowns. “I’m trying to help you. Jesus, you have no idea how deep this shit is, Emily, and you’re in it. I could be an ally.”

  “Could be?”

  “I am. Trying to be, anyway. Come on, babe, cut me some slack. I’m sorry about that party, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  She nods slowly, but she isn’t really paying attention to him. She knows he’s lying, the bastard, through his pin-straight teeth and pouting lips.

  “Did you have something you wanted to tell me, then?” she asks. Behind him, Dr. Granger stumbles on the steps and sprawls on her chest. One of the soldiers goes to help her and she cowers away from him, clutching her hand to her side.

  “I know you went somewhere last night, Emily,” Paul says softly. He doesn’t even glance behind him.

  Bird’s heartbeat races. She looks around for Roosevelt, but of course she doesn’t see him. “I don’t know what you mean —”

  He shakes his head. “They saw you come back late. You’re my responsibility, I keep telling you that. After the party, what I’m doing with Lukas Group … It’s me, Emily, one way or another. Don’t you want to make this easy? You used to like me. You can’t still, even a little?”

  “You want to date the senior class’s scandal of the year?”

  He rolls his eyes. “If you’re with me, you won’t be a scandal. Even with that hair.”

  “What’s wrong with my hair, Paul?”

  A crowd has surged around the collapsed doctor, blocking her view. The thin wail of a siren gets louder, closer. Paul finally turns around. “What the hell …?”

  “One of the doctors collapsed,” Bird says conversationally. “Do you think she has the v-flu?”

  “Goddamn.” He puts an arm out in front of her, like her mother does when someone cuts her off in traffic. Like an arm can stop Bird from hurtling through the windshield — or stop a colony of viruses from jumping to a fresh host. She’s worried for the doctor. She remembers her bitter words about a Venezuelan needing to be perfect, and relates to it more than she could articulate at the time. Has the stress of it finally overwhelmed her? Dr. Granger gave Bird the sleeping guide that has been, with the melatonin, the only rusted, dented shield she’s had against relentless insomnia and nightmares.

  The siren wail gets louder and then multiplies into a cacophonous multiharmonic symphony of panic. Soldiers bellow at the sudden rush of students from the chapel doors while paramedics struggle to push a stretcher against the tide. Bird feels faint and staggers against Paul, only then remembering the necessity of breathing. A break in the crowd allows her a glimpse of another doctor doing compressions on Dr. Granger’s exposed chest. A paramedic slaps a mask on her slack face, and then the rest is lost as Paul takes her wrist in a bruising grip and drags her away.

  “We have to get to the shelter,” he shouts.

  Nearby, a freshman girl shrieks and points at the sky. They all turn to follow the line of her wavering finger, and Bird doesn’t know what she expected — maybe a low-flying plane heading for the White House, to finish what they started when she was just a toddler — but she’s astonished at the appearance of what looks more like a crop duster than a jumbo jet, raining mist somewhere east of them.

  Paul sticks a hand into her pocket, and she punches him in the chest without thinking. Then she realizes that he’s grabbed her bunched-up face mask.

  “What was that for?”

  “We’re done, Paul. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Emily …”

  A sonic boom drowns out the rest of his words. A black blur connects with the crop duster, and they both explode in the clear, cold air above the city. She doesn’t understand what she’s just seen, but she knows that it has changed their lives forever.

  “Put it on,” Paul says, giving her the face mask. Just what was that crop duster raining on the city before the other beast shot it down? What good can a flower-printed mask do against it? But she puts it on.

  She allows herself to be carried along like a pebble in a stream by the crowd and soldiers, down into the chapel basement with a mismatched group of lower and upper schoolers and whoever else was nearby at the time. She tries to make sense of the barked orders over the walkie-talkies, but all she can gather is what she already knows: Something horrible has happened nearby, and they’re all in danger of it coming for them.

  “You didn’t mean that, right?” Paul says, still inexplicably beside her. “Because you know that I can help you.”

  “Only if you’re my boyfriend though, huh?” She shudders.

  “Haven’t I said sorry? What did you do with my bracelet, anyway?”

  What’s happening in the rest of the city? What about Nicky and Aaron? Her cell phone doesn’t get a signal down here, and she doubts she could get through to them even if it did. She takes a deep breath. “Fine, you think you can help me? Prove it. Make sure Nicky and Aaron are safe. Find out what’s going on in Northeast.”

  “Nicky and Aaron?”

  She’s told Paul about them a dozen times and Coffee only twice, but Coffee remembered. God, she misses him already. But at least he should be safe from that death rain, even if Brazil hasn’t been spared the v-flu.

  “My uncle and cousin. You know, the ones I’m living with. Go. Help, if that’s what you want to do.”

  Paul frowns. “So you’re not dumping me?”

  “I’m considering your application,” she says. “Now go impress me.”

  He mistakes her words for flirtation; grins at her before he struts away. She sags against the wall, numb where he touched her. The room is crowded and stifling, surely way over the fire limit. Even so, she catches a commotion by the door, an eddy in the swamp.

  She searches for a friendly face, but only sees Cindy de la Vega, uncharacteristically alone.

  “Cindy? What’s going on?”

  Cindy flinches at the sound of Bird’s voice, but doesn’t try to move away. “What isn’t?” she says. “This is such bullshit. I just wanted to go to Cornell with Byron and party and major in philosophy. And now what? We’re probably going to have to live in bunkers and eat space food and tell our children about the days when we used to see the sun.”

  Bird can’t help it, she laughs. “I don’t think it’s that bad yet, Cindy.”

  “Did you see that death plane? I bet the people on the surface are watching their skin fall off as we speak.”

  “I hope not!” She would not worry about Nicky and Aaron. They had to be fine. That plane couldn’t have been that far east.

  Cindy glances at her and swallowed. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just panicking. I heard that poor woman on the stairs died. Probably some other terrorist disease. First the party and then the quarantine and now …”

  Paul wades his way back to her, frowning like he’s learned something truly awful.

  “They’re okay, right?” she says, hurrying to meet him. “Nicky and Aaron?”

  Paul shakes his head. “I’m not sure yet. We’re checking. It’s not that. It’s … Emily, what the hell were you up to last night?”

  She flashes back to the hug, the feel of her skin on his, the pot that anyone could test for if they had a mind to. But if she looks panicked, God knows she has plenty of reason. “None of your business.”

  “It is my business,” he says. “It definitely is. Because look —”

  He points like Moses parting the sea. The commotion by the door reveals itself as a beanpole of a boy with roving green eyes and thick, curly hair, flipping a pen between his fingers and looking warily at an older ma
n in a suit as he speaks with Mrs. Early.

  “Alonso’s back.”

  Make me stay, he said. But she told him to leave, she swears she did. Their eyes meet clear across the shelter.

  They’ll crucify you, she thinks. He tosses the pen high in the air and catches it easily in long fingers. His look is unfathomable, indecipherable, granite-hard.

  Her joy, for an evanescence, drowns the world.

  A clue:

  I have already told you what happened.

  An admission:

  I don’t remember everything.

  A question:

  Have you made us strong enough to find out for yourself?

  When Bird was eleven years old, her school bus crashed in the middle of a small suburban intersection on the way back home from a field trip. It shouldn’t have been a bad accident, but the other car was driving thirty miles over the speed limit and plowed right into the side of her bus. One kid died, that’s what the reporters all said on the evening news, while their parents huddled in the waiting room of the hospital. No one knew whose child had died, and the stink of ill-wishes clogged their noses like clotting blood. Carol Bird silently prayed the dead child would be Gretchen Borowitz, who had cheated off of her daughter six months before, causing no end of trouble for both of them. What Greg Bird thought during those dark hours, he never said, though Bird can’t quite imagine her detached father wishing soul-destroying grief on anyone. Carol Bird, in a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, said those two hours aged her two years. And when the bullet did fall on the Borowitz family, Carol Bird told herself for years that it couldn’t possibly be her fault, that no wish of hers could really kill a child. Emily Bird always thought that it was the guilt, not the waiting, that had aged her mother in the months afterward.

  But now, four hours into her involuntary entombment, she realizes that her mother had been, for once, merely honest. The hours of waiting while Nicky or Aaron could already have choked to death on poison gas have taken her past anxiety, to a point that Coffee might call an altered state of consciousness.

  They still haven’t spoken. He sits in the corner with the man in the suit who Bird has decided must be his lawyer. Paul told her that Coffee turned himself in that morning, making a deal with the DA and the school to finish the semester while he awaits trial. She wonders what Roosevelt thinks of this, since Paul looks torn between wary satisfaction and vague discontent.